


They Reflect Reality

by Alexicon



Series: dc works [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 07:27:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5819551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexicon/pseuds/Alexicon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>There were too many of them.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Reflect Reality

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [RedRaidingHood](http://archiveofourown.org/users/RedRaidingHood) for her advice.

There were too many of them. There were too many, and Tim was losing. There was no way he’d survive this. All he had left was his fists and his feet and whatever lay between, and he was too weary to make it through the fight unscathed.

Except...

There was something sharp next to his hand. It was curved and dark, made of some sort of lightweight metal, and it fit comfortably into his hand.

Tim couldn’t tell if it was a knife or a batarang. ( _He kept his eyes away --_ ) He didn’t look at his hand to check.

Instead, he struck. There were more than five men; he wasn’t sure how many exactly, but it was enough to overwhelm him unless he was fast and brutal and in perfect form. He jumped, and dodged, and stabbed, and suddenly there were fewer facing him than there had been.

They attacked. There were hands on him from every direction. Searing pains shot through him wherever they touched, and something snapped in his chest when a blow fell on him from the side. Tim struck out blindly with both hands. He couldn’t tell where his hits landed, but land they did, and soon enough the last man fell to the ground slowly, like he was lying down to sleep.

Tim looked at his hands, and there was blood. He looked around him, and there were bodies. And none were moving.

They were dead. Tim knew that, just as certainly as he knew he had done it. They were dead, and there was so much _pain_ in Tim’s chest -- 

He looked down. Tim was...oh. He was bleeding. There was blood soaking through the front of his costume.

Tim had been diagnosed and had diagnosed himself enough times to know that this was the point where he activated the emergency transmitter and relocated to a position where it would be safe to pass out. But he didn’t have an emergency transmitter on him, and unconsciousness was approaching faster than usual.

Tim panicked.

“Help me! I killed them!” he shouted, before he even knew he had thought to do so. “I killed them, someone help me!” But it was still too late. Everything was drifting away...

And Tim jolted awake, heart beating frantically. His eyes darted around the room until his gaze was caught on the figure at the other end of the sofa upon which Tim lay.

Jason was staring at him.

Tim froze, then relaxed. “What happened?” he said, working his mouth carefully to make sure his words weren’t garbled.

Nothing hurt. Tim discovered with a quick slide of his hand against his abdomen that not only was there no blood, but there also wasn’t anything alien to his body, such as bandages or stitches. All he found on himself was the soft cotton of his pajama shirt and a huge, crocheted blanket he’d never seen before lying over the upper half of his torso and his left arm.

“You fell asleep,” Jason told him, leaving all sorts of accusations merely implied by his tone.

“Did I?” asked Tim vaguely, but he remembered. He had invited Jason up for dinner -- well, so Jason would make dinner, really -- and they had turned on the television...and yes, Tim had curled up against the sofa’s arm and fallen asleep. In his defense, it had been a week even longer than the usual (the usual being excruciatingly long) and therefore Tim had gotten nearly no sleep at all. “Then that was a dream,” he surmised.

“I guess so,” Jason replied. “Unless you’ve pissed off any wizards or hypnotists lately. How ‘bout it, Timmy? Any sleep-related bad guys whose plans you’ve foiled recently?”

“No,” said Tim definitely. All of the criminals lately had been ridiculously mundane. He had been almost disappointed by that, although he knew better than to tempt fate by saying anything about it.

“Yeah, probably a dream.” Jason suddenly looked extremely uncomfortable. “Do you...want to _talk_ about it?”

“Not really.”

“It’s not good to keep things bottled up all the time,” Jason warned.

Tim snorted, rolling his eyes. “Says Mister Healthy Coping Mechanisms himself,” he snarked back. “I look forward to when your self-help book comes out. It’ll be in the bookstore -- T for Todd, or H for Hood? -- and probably called _Destruction, Denial, and Dominoes_ , or something annoying and alliterative like that.”

Jason raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “That’s not bad, actually. If I ever do write a self-help book, I’ll have you write the introduction.” He kept a straight face for only a second before cracking a wicked grin. Jason muffled his pointedly hysterical laughter with his hand.

Tim glared half-heartedly. “Very funny,” he told Jason. Jason flicked Tim’s leg and settled back into the sofa, smile melting into a serious expression.

“What did you need help with?” Jason asked abruptly.

“What?” said Tim.

“In your dream,” Jason said. “What did you need help with in your dream? You kept saying you needed help.”

Tim’s instinctive reaction was to tell Jason it was none of his business. Lately, though, he’d been trying to get along better with Jason -- which included Tim being slightly more polite, and doing his best not to beat the crap out of Jason. It was going well. They hadn’t physically fought in two weeks, and the last time had only been over a certain undead boy leaving a muddy bootprint on one of Tim’s dress shirts.

“I was dying,” Tim replied at last. “It was...bloody.”

Jason hummed and nodded. “Sucks,” he said eloquently.

Tim didn’t say, ‘You would know,’ because he had tact sometimes, even when he was exhausted and feeling bad. Instead, he just said, “Yeah,” and left it at that.

“Who’d you kill?”

“I said that out loud, too?”

“No, I read your mind,” Jason said, rolling his eyes. “All kinds of interesting things in that head of yours, Timmy. I _knew_ it was you who stole my cake last week.”

“Funny. First of all, it wasn’t me,” Tim lied, “and second, even if it was, you’d have no proof.”

“There wasn’t proof, no. That’s how I knew it was you.”

“It could have been Bruce,” protested Tim.

They stared at each other blank-faced for a moment before bursting into laughter.

“Yeah, okay, maybe not,” Tim admitted.

“It was you,” said Jason. “And don’t think this distracted me from my question, little thief. You sounded pretty distressed.”

“I’m not a damsel,” Tim said immediately, hoping to cut off any comments otherwise.

Jason gave him a dry glance. “I know that,” he replied.

Tim nodded sharply once and tried to relax his shoulders. “They were bad guys,” he said finally. “At least, I think they were. They were the ones who attacked me.”

“They’re bad guys if they’re attacking you,” Jason pointed out, patting Tim’s leg softly.

“Yeah, but I killed them,” said Tim, heartfelt, and regretted it in the next second. His jaw tensed as he turned his head away from Jason’s sharp gaze.

Jason rubbed at Tim’s leg comfortingly . “Couple of things,” he said, looking like he was trying to choose his words carefully. “It was a dream, first off.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, especially not in Gotham,” Tim muttered. Gotham had a way of making dreams come true in the worst possible ways.

“True. But still -- and honestly, I may be the worst possible person to ask about this, you know me and how I deal with my problems -- ” (Tim snorted against his will) “ -- but I prioritize your your safety over the lives of some assholes who decide that hurting you’s not their worst decision on a long, long list of bad decisions.”

Tim refused to admit to feeling warm at that. He militantly suppressed a smile and drove his feet into Jason’s leg affectionately.

“Thanks,” he said quietly. He changed the subject, picking at the crocheted pattern resting on his chest. “Where did you get this blanket? It’s really nice.”

Jason went still and tried a charming grin on for size when Tim raised his eyebrows.

“I, uh, I found it.”

“In my apartment?” Tim asked doubtfully.

“... _Sure_.” Jason laughed a tad manically. Suddenly, he suggested that they watch a movie “or anything, Timmy, you oughta get your mind off of depressing things,” so they put on _The Princess Bride_ and traded off who quoted whose lines for the rest of the night.

The next day, Tim found himself on patrol in one of the many dark, secluded alleys in Gotham City, interrupting a group of men doing something particularly shady with a dozen crates and two obviously armed lookouts. He dropped down from the roof softly and knocked out one of the lookouts before the others noticed and raised a cry.

Tim was outnumbered. He’d been outnumbered many times in fights; this was nothing new.

Three of them rushed him, snatching at his limbs. Tim kicked out at them, but one managed to grab hold of his arm and forced him to the ground. He snapped a foot at the man’s knee and twisted away. The other two fell on him then, pinning his arms and legs to the ground before Tim could get a hit on either of them. Tim tried to throw them off of him, to no avail.

Finally, Tim managed to wrench his head around to bite the man holding his arms down. The man flinched away and freed Tim’s upper half in the process. Then Tim chopped a hand at the other man’s neck, which hit him hard. He toppled off, gasping.

Tim sprang up and knocked all three of them out.

There were seven left. There were seven, and Tim was shaking feeling back into his hands. His hand felt strange. There was a phantom weight, an impression in his grip of a batarang (or perhaps a knife). He glanced to his side to see, to check if something had appeared in his hand like it had in the dream.

There was nothing in his hand. He tightened it into a fist, then stretched it out.

And then something thudded heavily into his hand. Tim looked down at it, confused, only to see that it was someone else's gloved hand. Thankfully, it was still attached to its person, whose expression was indiscernible through the red helmet covering it, but who -- Tim was sure -- had a giant grin on his face.

“What are you doing here?” Tim hissed, ignoring the men who were currently backing away from them slowly.

“Came to join in on the fun,” said Jason. The smile was clear in his voice. “Hope you don’t mind me dropping by.”

Tim rolled his eyes. “Let go of my hand,” he said, privately relieved.

“What, can’t you fight with one hand tied behind your back?” teased Jason. “B’s slipping, if he didn’t train you in that.”

“I would prefer not to fight with a hand weighed down,” said Tim, flashing a bright fake smile. “Dead weight’s so hard to counteract, you understand.”

Jason gasped theatrically. “You _wound_ me,” he said, but he dropped Tim’s hand after one final squeeze.

“We can get back to that later,” Tim murmured, preparing to spring at the thoroughly bewildered men plastered across the crates on the wall of the alley.

“The wounding or the handholding?” Jason asked. He was already there, punching one of them in the face.

“Either one,” Tim gritted out, wrestling another to the ground. “Take your pick.”

Jason headbutted the final conscious armed lookout, resulting in a loud smack. “I’m gonna hold you to that.”

“Good,” said Tim, smirking.

(They won, both uninjured. Jason’s hands were much warmer and softer with neither of them wearing gloves.)

**Author's Note:**

> I had this dream and it was kind of disturbing. But then I made it into a story!
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](http://lexiconallie.tumblr.com)!


End file.
